Pictures of him flushing the toilet with his vacuum cleaner end up on Facebook

In an article published this week, MIT Technology Review revealed some embarrassing revelations about iRobot, the maker of the Roomba robot vacuum. And the media reports that it had access to a series of photos, filmed by vacuum cleaners of this brand, that were shared online. The most embarrassing image is that of a young woman sitting on a toilet that allegedly ended up on Facebook. In part of these photos, the woman’s face will be visible.

scary! However, before you panic, know that the vacuum cleaner pictured was no ordinary device. iRobot has confirmed that the images discovered by MIT Technology Review were indeed shot by its Roomba robot vacuum. However, these were “special development bots with hardware and software modifications” that were not commercially available. The company explains that these special bots were distributed to collectors and paid employees.

to reassure you (a little)

These people signed a contract with iRobot and agreed to send data from these vacuums, including videos, to the company to train the AI. In addition, the robots used in this process will have a green light that turns on to clearly indicate that they are shooting. iRobot adds that the role of these participants is paid “Remove anything they consider sensitive from wherever the robot is working, including children.”

In other words, iRobot obtained the images with the consent of the people involved, who signed an agreement, and who gets paid. But despite this, these photos should not end up on a social network. This “rare” incident (according to iRobot) would have been caused by one of my service providers. In fact, if iRobot needs video recordings of vacuum cleaners, it aims to train its artificial intelligence and computer vision to recognize objects in the home and humans.

To train or improve its AI, iRobot needs images on which to label objects. Instead of assigning this task of identifying and labeling items in photos to internal staff, the company uses contractors. It is because of this service provider that the leak occurred.

How did these private photos end up on Facebook?

Basically, the respective provider employs workers all over the world. And apparently, he was one of those workers who shared the photos, discovered by the MIT review, in a Facebook group. It doesn’t seem like the point is to disclose, because it would be a kind of closed group of mutual aid between people working on similar projects.

Citing the media, an iRobot representative confirms that the company takes all precautions to protect personal data and that sharing of these images has been approved. “violates a written non-disclosure agreement between iRobot and the image annotation service provider”. Its CEO, Colin Angel, said so “iRobot is terminating its relationship with the service provider that leaked the images, and is actively investigating the matter and taking steps to help prevent a similar leak by any future service provider.”

The problem here is that the annotations for images that may contain sensitive information have been outsourced to another company. I hired hard-to-manage workers. iRobot asserts that this is a rare situation, but the MIT Technology Review article questions the entire practice of training AI (which other companies may be using, not just in connected home devices).